Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

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Kristol Wants Another War

Bill Kristol, who has never seen a proposed invasion that didn’t give him an erection, now has his sights set on Iran. He’s using the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador as a pretext for launching yet another multi-trillion dollar war that will end up killing hundreds of thousands of people not named Bill Kristol:

This Iranian regime has the blood of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan on its hands. It’s a sponsor and facilitator of terror organizations that have killed innocent Americans, Israelis, Iraqis, Afghans, Argentines, and many others. It’s a brutal dictatorship. And it’s seeking nuclear weapons while denying it’s doing so. It’s long since been time for the United States to speak to this regime in the language it understands—force.

And now we have an engraved invitation to do so. The plot to kill the Saudi ambassador was a lemon. Statesmanship involves turning lemons into lemonade.

Yeah, because going to war is just like opening a lemonade stand. Kristol, of course, will continue to serve in the 101st Fighting Neocon Keyboardists Regiment during the war.

Comments

Oh yeah. Saddam and Osama and the Iranian mullahs were such good friends. Saddam was an American ally until Bush Sr unexpectedly turned on him. Osama was trained by the Americans to fight the Soviets. The mullahs came to power on the back of very justified anti-American feelings in Iran. All our meddling is going so well, let’s bankrupt ourselves in one last grand fling.

This is what doomed the USSR. They had an empire and a First world military riding on a Third world economy. The empire eventually got stretched too far and too expensive, and collapsed suddenly. It might not have been much different for the old Roman empire.

George Sanayana: Those who don’t learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

Kristol is an idiot.

Iran would be an order of magnitude more expensive than Iraq. There are 70 million Iranians, almost the population of the UK. We would probably win the battles and get bogged down in an endless and expensive occupation. Without much to show for it in the end.

Um…has this ridiculous chickenhawk looked at a map recently? Iran is MUCH BIGGER than Iraq, and probably has a good deal more people who have to be looked after and policed by an occupying army. How many fucking soldiers and support personnel does Kristol think it will take to effect a decent regime-change in such a big country? Do we even have that many of the needed personnel available? That’s kind of an important question, given how badly our last two invasions went because we had (and still have) too few boots on too much ground.

Wait, lemme guess…Kristol didn’t care enough to think any of that through at all. He didn’t know shit before 9/11, and he hasn’t learned shit since. Why anyone ever took such a little shit seriously is beyond me.

Funny how a guy who allegedly wants to free people from Islamofascist tyranny, wants to invade the most democratic country in the region. Did he advocate attacking the rigid backward Wahabbi-leaning monarchy of Saudi Arabia when it turned out most of the 9/11 hijackers were from there? Hell no, but now a country with republican institutions, a clear desire for democracy, growing discontent with its corrupt mullocracy, and semi-credible elections, is fair game for “liberation.”

Wassametter, Billy boy, is AIPAC upset because they can’t call Israel “the only democracy in the Middle East” anymore?

Haven’t enough of our young men and women died or lost their legs or arms or brain function in our wars in the middle east? Enough already!
The US needs to rethink its priorities in terms of what to spend our money and effort on. I don’t see “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb-bomb Iran” as even making onto the list for discussion.

The most frightening thing about his mindset is that he views throwing away thousands of lives and trillions of dollars in another fruitless occupation as “turning lemons into the lemonade”.

Of course, if it were his own ass on the line, maybe he wouldn’t be so quick to call war “lemonade”.

Ever see Kristol on The Daily Show or one of the very few other outlets where someone calls him on his bullshit? He just sits there grinning like an idiot Jack O’Lantern as if begging someone to just punch his lights out.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that slc1@7 is being scarcastic/Poe. Because while MAD and nuclear winter is a colution to the world’s problems (no people=many fewer problems), it’s not what anyone with more than 2 brain cells would call a *good* solution.

And really, war with Iran? Could that idiot even find Iran on a labeled map?

Somebody’s been playing too much Portal 2. Allow me to quote from the game:

“When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!”

When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!

Jonah Goldberg, Ledeen’s colleague at National Review, coined the term “Ledeen Doctrine” in a 2002 column. This tongue-in-cheek “doctrine” is usually summarized as “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business,” which Goldberg remembered Ledeen saying in an early 1990s speech.

We know how to deal with serial killers and genocidal maniacs. There aren’t that many monsters like slc1 among us but they do exist.

When they break our laws, we arrest them, try them, and warehouse them in prisons for the safety and continuing existence of our society and the people within it. That is what the police, courts, and US armed forces are for.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that slc1@7 is being scarcastic/Poe.

You’re guess is wrong. slc is sane on most things, but when it comes to Israel, he turns into a genocidal-supporting moron. There’s no reasoning with him on the topic–everyone hates Israel, so bomb, bomb, bomb them.

On the off chance that you’re actually serious, though, here’s a thought; why don’t you go ahead and volunteer to join an Airborne division in order to be one of the first ones off the plane to “break a few egg shells”? I’m positive that your gung-ho attitude will inspire your NCO to put you up front at point where you truly belong in the beginning of the invasion of Iran.

That, or he’s just looking for a way to weed the serious idiots out of his platoon.

Funny how a guy who allegedly wants to free people from Islamofascist tyranny, wants to invade the most democratic country in the region. Did he advocate attacking the rigid backward Wahabbi-leaning monarchy of Saudi Arabia when it turned out most of the 9/11 hijackers were from there?

Um…has this ridiculous chickenhawk looked at a map recently? Iran is MUCH BIGGER than Iraq, and probably has a good deal more people who have to be looked after and policed by an occupying army.

I certainly don’t support such an invasion but there’s two (or six or seven) sides to this.

Iraq is a special case that probably required a lot more effort than it otherwise would have because it’s one of those countries that was created out of whole cloth by the British empire. There’s little or no “Iraqi” consciousness.

Iraq has a Shia Arab majority, an economically and politically dominant Sunni Arab minority and a Kurdish minority. Saddam (of the Sunni groups) kept it together through force and brutality. When we pulled his legs out from under him the country imploded. The Shia wanted to kill the Sunnis, the Sunnis got very nervous that the Shia were trying to kill them and the kurds have basically seceded from Iraq and formed Kurdistan in the northern 1/3rd of the country.

Iran on the other hand although it has more than twice the population of Iraq has a very distinct national consciousness. There’s a strong cultural mythology that the present Iranians are the heirs of the Persian empire. In some ways this even surmounts the dominant Islamic culture.

This is a double edged sword. On one hand, insulting the Iranians is a good way to get the entire 70 million population against us.

On the other hand, if the government of Iran changes, it has a much lower chance of becoming a failed state like Iraq almost did.

The monster is ideed very stupid. The Red Chinese had nuclear weapons from 1964. The Vietnam war was from 1969 to 1974.

2. I seriously doubt that the former Soviet Union was interested in trading Moscow for Hanoi.

Given your cognitive defects, your opinion is worthless. They more likely would feel that if Hanoi goes, Moscow is next. There is nothing to be gained by trusting a genocidal nation that freely uses nukes.

At best, they may have just taken out Saigon and a few other US allied nations. As you say, does the USA want to trade Washington DC for Saigon or Bangkok? In fact, it is a near certainty by cold war doctrine, MAD, mutual assured destruction.

Well this is good news. While slc1 is a genocidal monster, he is clearly ignorant and very stupid. Doesn’t mean they can’t kill, it just means they aren’t going to be very good at it and won’t get too many people.

PS I hate to do this, but my guess is that slc1 is very old and has advanced alzheimers. There are other explanations for such atrocious and deluded behavior but not many.

slc1“If one wants to make an omelet, one must break a few egg shells.”
Ooo! Now say “Dantooine is much too remote to make an effective demonstration of this station. You may fire at will.” and blow up Alderaan.

The Iranians don’t have q00l dronez like we do, for our assassinations, so they have to do the old-school way. But how dare we complain about a bombing and a bit of “collateral damage” when they’re just doing ‘foreign policy’ US-style?

Had we used a half dozen well targeted 15 megaton bombs on Vietnam, we would not have lost that war.

We wouldn’t have won it, that’s for sure. We’d have proved that we were the world’s most dangerous rogue state, willing to use genocidal force aggressively and indiscriminately. It would have triggered tremendous (and justified!) retaliation.

Would the USSR have launched nukes at us? Probably not. Would they have quietly proliferated nukes to the rest of the planet in response? Almost certainly. And eventually one of them would have found its way into a US city. Only fools make war as directly as you appear to think is appropriately. Your attitude is monstrous, but what really worries me is your silly certainty about how the world works in whatever la-la land you live in.

BTW, if you want someone to blame for Iran’s nuclear ambitions, try George W. Bush — who taught the world that the single best way to keep the US off your back is WMD. And Barack Obama, who cemented that lesson in Libya this year. Most right-wing americans have bought the non-proliferation line but fail to understand that non-proliferation is seen by most of the world as a monopoly on genocidal weapons by the ultra-powerful, by which they lord it over the rest of the world. A small country with 3 or 4 nukes is not going to attack the US because – as Kim Il Sung said in 1978 “If we had nuclear weapons and launched them at the US, so what? you would kill all the Korean people.” This was from a man whose country had literally been bombed back to the stone age by US bomber command after the ceasefire at the Korean DMZ. He understood. Muammar Ghadaffi probably also understood, a few weeks ago.

If you want to count all the way back to the first US boots on the ground in ‘Nam, then we can count Eisenhower’s “advisors” in ’59 and call yr statement a minor typo, but that would be pushing the definition of a fuzzy-edged war pretty far the other way.

1. Actually, the Vietnam War for the US started in 1965 when the first large contingent of combat troops was sent by President Johnson. By 1969, we were winding down our participation (ever hear of Nixon’s Vietnamization strategy, termed by columnist Stewart Alsop the fig leaf?).

2. Red China may have had a crude nuclear weapon by 1964 but they had no means to deliver it.

3. The Soviet Union was in no position to do anything about a US nuclear attack on Vietnam in 1964. Information that has come to light since the collapse of the Soviet Union indicates that their nuclear capability was greatly inferior to ours. We had already gone eyeball to eyeball with them the previous year (remember the Cuban Missile Crisis)and they had blinked.

4. As for the Soviets emptying the holes in anticipation of a US nuclear attack on them, obviously they would have had to be reassured prior to any such attack on North Vietnam that we had no intention of attacking them.

Re Aquaria, @ #28

You’re guess is wrong. slc is sane on most things, but when it comes to Israel, he turns into a genocidal-supporting moron. There’s no reasoning with him on the topic–everyone hates Israel, so bomb, bomb, bomb them.

Coming from the blog’s resident husband swapper, I consider that a great compliment. Israel uber alles.

There was no compelling reason for the United States to have dropped nuclear weapons on Vietnam. Besides, Vietnam today is probably not that far off from being what Vietnam would have looked like to proponents of the war in the 1960’s had we “won”. We have diplomatic relations with it, we trade with it, American citizens can visit it, and we are even conducting joint training exercises with its navy.

@Raging Bee (#8),
I always wonder when people repeat the “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East” meme. I mean, I guess their definition of “democracy” is “country I like”, but still… What do they think counts as the Middle East? Even excluding Iran (and Syria, which is a one-party state where elections are pretty much meaningless) still leaves five republics (Yemen, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt) and three monarchies with elected parliaments (Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan). And restricting the definition to only countries The Economist’s Democracy Index doesn’t consider authoritarian, regardless of nominal system of government, leaves Turkey and Lebanon to account for. So what, they’re not Middle Eastern enough? I mean, they’re not even run by “Islamofascists”, and they’re typically classified as being “on our side”. I really don’t get it.

“The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don’t mind admitting it. They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation’s problems would be another 100 Year War.” — Hunter S. Thompson

SLC – Not quite the same region, but …
Still think a few 15 megaton nukes are a good idea?*
Dingo
—-
* no doubt Scientific American is ‘the most anti-Israel magazine – in the WORLD!!!’ [/Jeremy Clarkson] (along with the other 99.99% of the media, leaving only a bare handful of fringe media outlets, that whole-heartedly agree with your preconceptions naturally)

Raven (#27) – “When they break our laws, we arrest them, try them, and warehouse them in prisons for the safety and continuing existence of our society and the people within it. That is what the police, courts, and US armed forces are for.” [Emphasis mine]
Go tell that to the inhabitants of My Lai.
Or relatives of civilians (or even US citizens) extra-judically killed in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iraq.
I’m sure they’d agree with you. :(
Dingo
—
PS: Yes, I understood your wider point. It’s just that the quoted section just jumped out at me.

Aaaand…splat! Once again SLC proves himself completely out of touch with reality. Y’know, I’d have a lot more respect for Israel if its most vocal supporters weren’t such bloodthirsty simpleminded bigots. (Of course, it would also help if the “settlers” who dominate their present-day politics weren’t such bloodthirsty simpleminded bigots…)

The most disgraceful thing about chickenhawks like Kristol and SLC — aside from their blind eagerness to kill unspecified numbers of people without regard to any consequences, of course — is that they really don’t seem to understand how their policy prescriptions play into the hands of the worst elements of Iranian politics, and will inevitably give us more radicalism and terrorism, not less.

Go back to 1980, and remember how Iranian politics “worked” then: Iran had a government of sorts, but every time they did or said anything the hostage-takers in Teheran didn’t like (i.e., anything that wasn’t 100.00% pure radical Shiite anti-Americanism), the hostage-takers made a huge stink, appealed to Khomeini, and got Khomeini to come down on their side. Always. The hostage-takers became, quite literally, a state within a state, with veto power over the entire range of Iranian policy, foreign and domestic. (Elected president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr said exactly this in his inaugural speech; and was driven out of the country a month later.)

Back to the present: this botched — and half-assed — assassination plot has apparently been connected to the Quds Force, which is a part of the Revolutionary Guard, which has been a virtual bastion of radical Islamist purity in the midst of a government that’s been slowly moving away from radical purity and toward more normal relations with the real world. It is very possible that the Quds Force devised this plot on their own, with no input from the Iranian government, foreign ministry, military or head of state, in order to subvert any attempt to normalize Iran’s relations with the world and keep up the religious fervor and blame-America-first hatred that keeps them relevant. The radicals remember the lessons of 1980, and they’re trying to apply them today, for the same objectives, using the kind of terrorism they’ve already been credibly accused of supporting.

And if we go to war with the whole nation of Iran, we will be giving the radicals exactly what they want: another excuse to withdraw from the outside world, purge themselves of outside influences and ideas, and blame America for everything that’s wrong inside their own borders for another generation or more.

IF repeat IF we absotively posolutely have to bomb Iran over this puny (and NONLETHAL) non-incident, then we have to be careful to target ONLY the Quds force; because in all likelihood they’re acting as their own agents, with their own agenda, like the state-within-a-state that dictated policy for 444 days back around 1980. They’re the real enemy, and the last thing we can afford to do is give them more power within Iran by confusing them with the whole of the nation.

I’ll go Mr. Tommykey one better. There was no compelling reason to get involved in the Vietnam war to start with. This intervention was as stupid as the invasion of Iraq by Dubya, the cokehead, based on non-existent WMDs and non-involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

Somebody else can do the physics but I feel safe in guessing that the amount of NuQlar fallout from a 15Megaton bomb would be something like a gigafuckshitton. Multiply that by several and you get a LOT of pissed off earthlings outside the U.S.

The BOMB is only an option if you’re ready to piss on the dogs and call in the fire.

What the fuck does Israel have to do with the original topic? Except that Israel’s brain-dead cheerleaders are mindlessly advocating irresponsible acts of war against countries Israel doesn’t like, in the vague, thoughtless hope that Israel can somehow benefit from the entire surrounding region being plunged into chaos. (And if attacking one country doesn’t help Israel as much as they promised, that just means we have to attack another.)

SLC – That whooshing sound….
Even a small nuclear attack would have a great effect on the whole Earth.
A very small nuclear war could cause 10+ years of worldwide drought, 2-3 years of worldwide crop failures and severe weather.
Bombing Iran (apart from the political problems) would cause all sorts of hurt in the world (including the US).
Still think it’s a viable option?
Dingo

Mr. Dingojack is seriously deluded. Above ground nuclear tests were conducted for over 20 years, including a 57 megaton bomb set off by the former Soviet Union. None of these dire consequences blathered about by Mr. Dingojack happened.

The amount of radioactivity released by a thermonuclear bomb is independent of the yield. That’s because the radioactive elements released are due to the fission bomb that is set off to start the fusion reaction and the same size fission bomb is used in all thermonuclear bombs, regardless of yield. Thus, the fission bomb used by the Soviets to set off the 57 megaton bomb mentioned above is the same size as the fission bomb used in the 100 kiloton bombs used in a MIRVed missile.

SLC – That 57Mt detonation wasn’t on top of a city was it, sooper genius? Detontations don’t cause ‘nuclear winters’ in themselves, the firestorms (particularly in fuel-rich urban environments) and the subsequent injection of carbon-rich smoke into the upper atomosphere does. This smoke doesn’t remain in the area attacked but spreads around the world, reducing precipitation and the amount of incoming light worldwide. These effects can occur with even a small amount of megatonnage being invovlved. Or that’s what scientistist who actually study these things say.
Dingo
—
OBTW what’s the weather like back in 1983?

The firestorms caused by the denotation of half a dozen 15 megaton bombs would be no worse then the firestorms that occurred in WW 2 from the incendiary attacks on Tokyo and other Japanese cities and Dresden. None of Mr. Dingojacks dire consequences occurred.

So, SLC, you actually think nuclear bombs are perfectly safe? That we can use them without unintended, unpredictable or uncontrollable consequences? That alone proves your exclusivist, expansionist, eliminationist bigotry has set you completely apart from both reality and basic human decency. Contratulations, chickenhawk, you’ve just proven yourself more retarded (mentally and morally) than Bill Kristol. And, quite possibly, more embarrassing to decent Israelis. Go fuck yourself.

You’re the physics guy and I won’t argue the science because I can’t; but I think that the amount of fallout generated would be more than enough to wreak havoc on a lot of folks who are not the intended targets.

I doubt very much that India, China and other countries in the path of any potential fallout from bombs used by us would be sanguine about it.

The problem with fallout is that a larger yield bomb will spread the radioactivity over a wider area. I am assuming that the bombs to be used in the proposed attack on Iran would be ground penetrating weapons that would detonate underground, thus limiting the amount of fallout. In fact, in order to be effective in taking out Iran’s developing nuclear capability, they would have to detonate underground in order to insure their destruction.

Re Dingojack @ #64

Citation for what, that the firestorms would be no more severe then the WW2 firestorms or that the severe consequences claimed by Mr. Dingojack actually occurred during WW 2?

Oh look, I post one comment here and POOF this post is back on the “Most Active” list. Either I’m really special, or there’s something wonky about the “Most Active” sort function. Sadly, I’m guessing it’s the latter, since the “recent posts,” “comments,” and “archive” tabs don’t work either.

Speaking as a “decent Israeli”,
I’ve got only one thing I can say to this:

FUCK. YOU.

I respectfully request that this neonazi troll be permanently banned from this site.

This asshole is explicitly advocating genocide using eliminationist and nazi language. And dragging my country’s name into it.
For fucks sake, we still have people here with numbers on their arms!
My hands are shaking.
I’ve been lurking here for a year and I didn’t think I’d see something like this.

It’s not just a single comment brain-fart, the idiot is actually attempting to argue the point!

This is not the first time this troll has spouted nonsense like this,
in April he seriously argued for nuking Hizbolla in South Lebanon!
See:25.10.2011 dispatches
See comments no.62, 84 and especially 109:

If past patterns hold true, SLC will disappear from this thread, post a few halfway reasonable comments elsewhere on Dispatches, then revert to knuckle-dragging mode once a topic allows him (maybe her, but this level of dumbth rarely co-exists with two X chromosomes) to go hyperzionist on us again.

I have only one thing to say to Mr. yaque. He should be ashamed of himself for meriting the praise of Mr. Butler, the the loudest and most vociferous Israel basher on this blog. Apparently, he is choosing to get into the pen with the pigs so he can’t complain if it is pointed out that he will inevitably emerge with a coating of mud.

As for Hizbollah, according to Israeli news sources, which I read every day (e.g. Jerusalem Post, Ynet, and Haaretz), they have stockpiled thousands of rockets capable of reaching Tel Aviv. Mr. yaque may warble a different tune when the next war starts and the rockets rain down on Tel Aviv and other cities in Israel.

SLC – The former, of course.
Dingo
—-
Some numbers or you to ponder:
Lancaster B1 special could carry one 22000lb (24.444 Short ton or 9980kg) bomb. The largest raid on Germany was a thousand plane raid. Thus the heaviest bombardment would have been about 48.47kT of TNT.
In fact Lancasters delivered 608612 (long) tons in 156000 sorties (Taylor, John W. R. “Avro Lancaster”. Combat Aircraft of the World from 1909 to the present. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1969. p314) or a total delvivery of around 2.59Mt over the whole 156000 sorties.

SLC: after mindlessly advocating nuking Iran — using a NONLETHAL incident as “provocation,” no less — you really don’t get to tell others what to be ashamed of. I don’t agree with the request to ban you, but other than that, yaque is right, and you’re wrong. And if he really is an Israeli as he said he is, that speaks volumes about your ability to speak for Israel’s national interests.

PS: As for DailyKos, that’s a very popular site, and probably much more heavily trafficked than this one. They probably have no choice but to restrict comments in some way or other anyway; so banning a brash tone-deaf warmonger like SLC would probably be inevitable.